Crisostomo Restaurant is a Filipino restaurant that serves Filipino food. Its food is a bit pricey but most servings are meant to be shared. After you calculate the cost of food for each person, the price is only twice as much as what you would pay at a fast-food joint. They have a few branches in Metro Manila but the ones I visit are the UP Town Center and Ayala Fairview Terraces restaurants.

Crisostomo Restaurant Review

There’s one reason I eat there. Behold!

Yes, it’s because of their paella. I love it! I forgot what it costs exactly but when I ate there with a senior we ordered one of these and the bill was below P400. This big picture shows the size. It’s not a huge paella pan as you can see when you compare its size with that spoon.

It’s served piping hot, hence the little foil thingie on the handle. Delicious! This dish contains rice, peas, boiled eggs, prawns, grilled pork, Spanish sausage, black olives, red and green bell peppers, diced tomatoes, and chicken, plus two slices of lemon and herbs as garnish. It’s a rather extravagant meal. When I order it, there’s always some leftovers that I can take home.

The ambiance in the restaurant is very homey and calm. If you go on a weekday it won’t be full. I mostly see a lot of groups or families eating there since the meals are meant to be shared. Sometimes people will order like two dishes per person and their whole table looks like it’s fiesta time.

I myself am perpetually in a diet and their food is good for that. Their stuff is healthy, with a lot of vegetables and fish. From what I can tell, the most recommended dish is their “pompano na sinigang sa miso.” The servings are large but you can just bring home what you don’t finish eating there.

Hakone, Japan is a popular tourist place. I didn’t go there myself but I was lucky enough to receive this box of four kinds of cookies as a gift from a relative who was recently in Hakone.

Hakone Japan Souvenir

This is what it looks like. The box is quite large and pretty nice. The four kinds of cookie flavors are chocolate, strawberry, green tea (matcha), and I think either vanilla or plain butter/sugar.
Sorry for the blurry pic. Anyway, this is just to show what it looks like inside the box.

As you can see there are four rows, one for each type of cookie, and there are only three cookies for each flavor, for a total of 12 cookies inside.

They are individually wrapped. This is good for sharing, especially with kids since… well, you know they can be less than hygienic sometimes.

*cough* Understatement! *cough*

The chocolate ones ran out first then the plain ones, then the strawberry. In my family no one but me wanted to eat the matcha cookies. Oh well, more for me!

Hakone Japan Souvenirs – Delicious Cookies

Here is a nice close-up of a strawberry cookie! As you can see, it is pink but just a light color. I like it. It also has little strawberry bits.

It’s yummy and tastes like strawberry but not intensely so. It’s also not too sweet. I was not able to sample the chocolate or plan ones since the kids in my family grabbed them all. 😉 The matcha ones were not my type, actually. They weren’t horrible but I preferred the strawberry cookies.

All in all, I’d say they were pretty good and the kids were satisfied. The cookies are a nice treat to bring back home when you come back from Japan.

As far as I know these are not available except in Japan. I haven’t seen them in online stores or anywhere else. If you want to buy online, there is one store that I like to use – Candysan. They are in Japan and ship worldwide. Check out my Candysan review here.

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson is a graphic novel that was originally published as a web novel. Now it’s in book form, which is perfect for presents!

This Christmas, I decided to give a young (teenage) relative a book as my Christmas gift. I must say that, unless your relative is a HUGE book nerd, it’s better to give another more “Christmassy” gift. You wouldn’t want to disappoint someone with an “uncool” present. I gave her Bluetooth headphones as an additional gift.

Nimona book review – my Christmas gift to my a teenaged relative

Nimona is the story of a superpowered sidekick, the titular Nimona, who works for the legendary supervillain Lord Blackheart.

My Nimona Book Review

In one sentence: It’s absolutely hilarious, touching, and has beautiful full-color art.

In addition, it’s a standalone which pretty hard to find these days. That’s a big plus for me since practically every other graphic novel has multiple volumes. That’s why it’s perfect for gifting – the recipient won’t have to buy the other volumes to read the rest of the story.

I do have one small nitpick though. The text was sooooo small! It was readable but I would have preferred much bigger text.

Nimona Sequel

Will there be a sequel? The interesting ending has left fan wanting more so people are asking whether or not there will be a Nimona 2. There has been talk about on the internet but nothing solid thus far. It seems like this is truly a standalone book.

Favorite Quote

‘‘I can’t have a kid following me around all day.’’

‘‘I’m not a kid. I’M A SHARK.’’

You can read the first three chapters for free on the website – click here.

Department store fragrances are all well and good. I love them since I love all types of good perfumes. But, honestly, I feel that indie fragrances are much more special because they make me feel like I don’t smell exactly the same as thousands, or possibly even *millions* of people.

Not much more to say here, I mean the scent isn’t too complicated. It’s just a sweet, gourmand fragrance that is nice to wear.

It seems that all Theme Fragrance items are shipped with a free item. I didn’t even know that was included. Anyway, since I already said I didn’t receive free items for this review, I will not be reviewing that free item (Go Go Soiree perfume roll-on). Also, I can’t review it because when I took it out of the box, a family member saw it and swiped it with my permission.

By the way, from being a small Etsy seller to having their own website, and being featured in various magazines, Theme Fragrance is becoming more and more successful. They are also selling on Amazon now. Here’s the link to Amuse Perfume Oil on Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G7UMI6G/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_Zrx2ybGE5CJRB (this is not an affiliate or referral link).

Elixir of the Rapid Mind is an item used in World of Warcraft. The effect is that it increases experience gain.

If it was available in real life, it would be an item that helps a person learn things faster. It would be great for school, learning a second language, or any other learning. If I had one, I would use it to learn Spanish.

Coffee is like a real life Elixir of the Rapid Mind. Caffeine is one of the oldest brain enhancers around.

Did you know that there are real life substances that allegedly work like an Elixir of the Rapid Mind? Just recently I came across the concept of Nootropics, “substances that improve cognitive function.” Wow, sounds good, right? Well, a lot of Nootropics are just regular foods like coffee (yeah, it really does help me concentrate!), green tea (I haven’t noticed any effect), pure dark chocolate (it’s super expensive to use the really high quality stuff), etc. There are also food supplements but I haven’t tried those. I prefer to stick with just food/drinks that improve brain function.

Expensive headphones or cheap ones? How about a mid-range headphone instead?

I would like to buy the really expensive headphones that cost like hundreds of dollars but I’m on a budget here and can’t afford to splurge. On the other hand, I don’t really want to buy the cheap ones that are $5 on Amazon.

After a long search for a reasonably priced headphone I chose the Beyution BT513 Bluetooth Wireless Headphones with Built in Mic.

Beyution BT513 Bluetooth Wireless Headphones Review

I got it from Amazon. The box is fine, it’s just a box but here’s a pic so that you can see how big it is. Please ignore the other stuff in the background, I just forgot to remove the TV remote when I took the picture.

If you look at the picture below, it’s a picture of the headphones. It comes with a nice little drawstring bag for storage.

The headphones are enormous! I got black and I feel it was a good choice since it goes with everything. I won’t have to suffer from wearing a green outfit while wearing pink headphones. Having said that, the headphones are so large that they are rather heavy and look “chunky” (for lack of a better word) on my head. I’m fine with it.

The weight took some getting used to since I normally wear earphones that are super light. At first it was annoying but I got used to it and, after a while, I no longer notice it.

The sound is much better than cheap headphones but not as good as what I have heard from the really expensive ones. This is pretty much what I expected. The best thing is that the ear part is large enough that outside sound is muted. It’s a noise-canceling factor that I do enjoy a lot. For the price, the sound is perfect. Good at the top pitches, same with bass, and the sound can be really loud if you turn the volume up.

Conclusion

5 out 5 stars! I am very satisfied and it’s worth what I paid for it. A solid product that I can use everyday for the price of $21 is great.

~ This is an independent review. I was not paid for it nor did I receive any product for free to review this. In short, I paid for this product and have no relationship with the manufacturer/seller.

Bartons Peppermint Bark, also called Bartons Gold Old Fashioned Peppermint Bark Dark Chocolate if you try to look for it online, is a Christmas treat that is made of crushed peppermint candy pieces embedded in white chocolate with a layer of dark chocolate at the bottom.

Bartons Peppermint Bark

There are many brands that make Peppermint back but, IMO, Bartons is the best. The large chunks (most brands use tiny pieces) of candy cane are crunchy but not hard on the teeth and the chocolate is thick so that the peppermint to chocolate ratio is great.

You might notice that on the box picture, the peppermint candy pieces are enormous and seem to fill the bark from edge to edge. I almost didn’t buy because of that since the candy bits looked like they were overpowering the chocolate. The reality is the image below.

As you can see, the proportions are much more equal and there is a good amount of peppermint candy but there’s also a lot of chocolate to balance it out. 10/10 would eat again!

The packaging isn’t pretty. The outer packaging is just a cardboard box and inside are these large sized bars of bark. However, what really matters is that the inside is absolutely scrumptious. Anyway, it’s also available in a tin but I believe it costs a bit more.

Out of all the games I have installed on my PC, the one I play the most is undoubtedly The Settlers 2. I have the 10th Anniversary edition which has improved graphics.

Here is a video about the gameplay.

I love when the little men (I think it’s always men, they don’t seem to have any females but I could be wrong) are all over the place doing all the tasks that I have given them.

The game starts off with just one village and the goal is to build your empire from there. Obviously, what the player builds is limited by the resources available to him/her which means that the first order of business is to gather raw materials. Once those are available, then the raw materials can be refined into tools and such.

While you are doing this, the AI player is also building an empire and as you start expanding your territory, clashes between your settlers and theirs are inevitable. If the AI wins a territory fight then they take over your buildings and your people are conquered, therefore they all begin working for the enemy. Noooooo!

The trick is to win all of the fights and eventually take over the entire map. I enjoy doing that because it gives me a great feeling of satisfaction when I have control off the entire land.

Today I bought this “mystery item.” It’s a mystery item for me since I cannot read the Japanese text on the can. Of course, when I got home I was able to google more info about this prodcust.

This is what it looks like:

The only thing I could make out from the can were the words “Choya” and “sparkling.”

Since I was not sure what it was when I saw it, I only bought one.

A quick Google search yielded the information that this mystery product is something called Sarari Sparkling by Choya. “Sarari” means silky smooth in Japanese. According to the Choya website, the ingredients are ume, sugar, cane spirit, and brandy.

I have no idea what ume is but apparently it is a sort of fruit that is commonly called the Chinese plum. Hmmm. In this case, the can contains brandy in which ume fruits have been steeped to give it a nice ume flavor. In short, this can is a can of Umeshi soda.

The taste is great and I loved the bubbles. It’s basically a bubbly, fruity, alcoholic drink. Good stuff, I recommend it.

Trivia: Eating the pickled ume fruit for breakfast can supposedly stave off misfortune (source). Does this also apply to drinking the umeshi?

In the past I used salt and salty condiments (soy sauce, Knorr seasoning, ect.) freely but these days I am trying to eat more fresh and healthy food. No more potato chips dripping with grease and salty goodness! Instead of using a lot of salt, it’s better to use spices. One of the things I have been using lately is pepper. Lots and lots of pepper!

Pepper is good for cardiovascular health because 1 teaspoon of it contains only 1 milligram of sodium which is less than 1% of the recommended daily allowance for sodium. (source) Using pepper in place of salt helps keep my daily sodium intake low.

Zin triple pepper blend

Just freshly cracked black pepper is quite awesome but I also use a nice blend of three types of pepper – green, black, and pink.

I have been trying to buy this at the nearest SM grocery store but alas, I was able to buy it only once. Subsequent visits yielded only the regular black pepper mills. Due to the lack of triple peppers in the local stores I have been buying this brand “Zin Gourmet Finishing Salt – Triple Pepper Blend” online. The pepper is easy to grind and the container has enough to last quite a while.

Zin also sells a bunch of other stuff such as pepper with pink Himalayan salt but I have not tried anything else yet.